


New York's winter air and a couple of trucks

by giurochedadomani



Series: A tale of love and glory [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giurochedadomani/pseuds/giurochedadomani
Summary: "Would His Highness be so kind as to lend me some clothes?”Tony tries hard not to grin.“And a bed, I trust?”“That would be preferable. If possible, somewhere I don’t have to cross my brother in the morning”.Loki’s poker face is a thing of marvel. It almost breaks (he swears that now the god is downright blushing) when Tony answers: “Of course, we don’t want to scandalize him with you staying overnight and all”.The god swallows and somehow (somehow!) manages to keep all his serious demeanor. He even replies, almost as an afterthought: “And bruised, of all things”.





	New York's winter air and a couple of trucks

He’s got a little bit of a situation.

Tony stares at the back of Loki’s suit (where has he left the cape) for a good couple of seconds before accepting the trickster’s presence in his living room.

He looks at the clock on the wall as it clicks 3 A.M.

The inventor would almost concede that he’s fast asleep and dreaming were it not for how Loki sighs and, without even turning to face him, says: “It’s not chivalrous to fire upon a disarmed opponent”.

A couple of years ago, Tony would have been suited up by now, but in this moment he feels a pang of concern when he sees the god tightly clutching the sink, trying not to put weight on his right leg as he cleans it with a damp cloth.

“...What happened?”

Loki’s mouth twitches despite himself.

He’s got a bruise across his left cheekbone. Almost blue. “The sharp air of New York’s winter damages my princely skin”, he says. His voice is low, very controlled, as if he's trying not to make it obvious that he's speaking through gritted teeth.

“New York’s winter air and at least a couple of trucks, for the look of it”.

Tony approaches him with caution, giving him an assessing look. A certain question shades any kind of drowsiness he may have had: “Is there some imminent, world ending threat?”

Loki closes him off with a curt: “Not that I know of”.

Well, now that's a final, totally tranquilizing answer. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

“Avengers haven’t been notified with an emergency since you last asked, sir”.

Tony’s becoming increasingly confused. Why would the god show up in the Avengers’ headquarters if it wasn't a matter of life or death. It's not as if they are besties out of the sudden. They talk, sometimes. Discuss strategies, if S.H.I.E.L.D. happens to consult the god on the magic menace du jour. Even if it's true that the god has taken a shine lately in showing up in his lab (to ask about his projects, show him weird, other worldly materials, but mostly vent about the other team members antics), they are not that close as for being primary contact with this type of emergencies.

“Then why are you here?”

Or maybe yes.

The inventor regrets his words as he realises that the most probable answer is to ask for help and that Loki seems to take his cluelessness as a downright negative, if how his shoulders shag a little and how he winces are anything to go by. He sounds a whole lot angrier when he speaks: “Are you going to throw me out? Now, that’s a level I didn’t expect the great Man of Iron to low himself to”.

Tony adds, as casually as he’s able to: “No, I meant here as in, in this room. I keep most my first aid kit by the lab— I thought you’d had notice it by now”.

Loki doesn’t reply right away, but that doesn’t mean that Tony is not already making calculations about it. He definitely still has a bottle of peroxide, ice bags galore, probably painkillers (though, which dosis could even have an effect on Loki, if he has his brother’s metabolism?). Now that he’s thinking about it, did he forget to resupply the bandages? He distinctly remembers Pepper nagging him into doing it.

Loki sighs.

He looks away and pretends to ignore Tony once again. “Go back to your rooms, Stark. I give you my word that I’m not going to destroy your sorry excuse of a house”, he says.

Yeah, right.

Tony is taking none of that. “You’re putting me on the edge, Prince of ‘Tis but a scratch”, states the inventor. “Come on”, he gently grabs Loki’s arm before waiting for an answer. It’s a statement of just how out of it is Loki that Tony gets to put it over his shoulders to help him move before the god reacts. He clutches on him and makes his way to a chair with as much dignity as he can manage.

It sits weird in Tony’s stomach, but not in an unpleasant manner. Mister Ice himself, with all the effort he puts in constructing his image of strength and mild boredom, has showed up in his floor in a moment of need. Not Thor's, or Valkyrie's, as he'd have expected. His.

“So, let’s see what we have here”, he says, giving him a once over once he’s sitting down. Between the missing pieces of armour and the ripped clothes that stick at some points of Loki’s chest, Tony can’t tell much. There’s a very easy solution to that, given that the god’s injures also include a very clearly broken leg, but if Tony already doubted if they’d be primary contact for emergencies, he’s pretty sure that his faint friendship with the trickster god doesn’t include that. He decides to push his luck.

He tries to make it sound as casual as possible as he says: “It'd be better if you stripped, really”.

The god sighs, as if he’s contemplating his own demise and Tony bites his tongue not to comment that now he’s just being dramatic for the sake of it. With a flair of his hand, his clothes start to disappear.

Loki’s fine. He’s not quite as built up as Thor, but that doesn’t make him scrawny. He’s lean and he’s got big shoulders and if he got a little bit of a tan (Tony can notice the stark contrast between the hair down his navel, black as a raven —who would have thought that Loki used briefs—), the inventor would almost consider calling him attractive.

Well, this is not the moment to dwell on that.

Specially, because what the god seems to be for sure is a tad bit self conscious: he doesn’t seem to be able to decide between looking at the inventor for a reaction —has Tony stayed silent for too long?— or putting up his walls and pretending that being almost naked in his living room is the most mundane experience of his life.

“I was not working against Thor”, Loki says, out of nowhere. “Or Asgard, for that matter. Or Midgard, may the All Father forbid”.

It dawns on Tony that he knows, even if he doesn’t know exactly why. Loki might be an ice cold asshole, but at the end of the day he’s not going to betray them. The inventor gets some ice bags out, a clean cloth and ask one of the robots to get some plaster.

“I didn’t ask”, he points out.

Loki looks at him for a good moment (is this some kind of test) before warning him with: “Stark, do not patronize me”.

Tony finishes to soak some gauze pad with wáter and a little bit of soap and pulls a chair to sit next to the god. “You’re awfully confident for a guy with a concussion”, he taunts him. “I can take care of that”, Tony adds, pointing to a nasty, but superficial gash on Loki’s side. He then points to the god’s shoulder: “And that doesn’t look broken and hopefully is not. However, your leg—”

Loki shakes his head. “I can take care of that myself”.

Well, we’ll see about that.

Tony starts cleaning Loki’s shoulder with quick, deft movements, paying attention at the changes on the god’s expression. He’s stiff as a rock, breathing in, breathing out slowly and focusing on his leg. When he starts drawing symbols on his leg, a soft golden light surrounding the skin, Tony cannot help but being utterly fascinated, as every time he catches Loki performing magic.

“I’m not performing a private class, Stark”.

Tony tries not to smile. He positions the god turning slightly away from him, so he can access the gash at his side.

He decides to tease him: “What? And let me in the hands of Strange?”

Even if it must sting like hell, Loki is starting to look far less like a zombie, perhaps even a little bit amused: “The inexperienced, untalented hands of Strange, yes”.

“You must have taken a big hit to the head”.

Tony himself has sometimes trouble working as a team with the mage, but he’s still pretty far from the hardcore rivalry that he seems to have developed with Loki. He’s not quite sure why the god cannot stand the guy, though he’s quite confident that the sheer size of their egos might have something to do with the whole issue.

“But now that you touch the issue, tell me”, Tony continues. “If you’re still a firm candidate for the next Asgardian 007 and yet —he makes a gesture encompassing the god’s injures— this isn’t the result of a mission gone wrong—”.

“Is this your understanding of how an interrogation must be carried on?”

Tony gets up for a moment to go to throw away the dirty gauze and breaks the bandage package, as the god attempts to bend his leg ever so slowly. He puts his foot down and relaxes, even if he looks a little bit surprised that it doesn’t hurt quite as much.

“I’m not interrogating you. I'm just curious. I mean it”, he adds, when Loki arches an eyebrow. He starts wrapping a roll on the god’s shoulder. “I have seen how you take a beating from a thing three times your size without even breaking a sweat”.

He has seen Loki fighting a fellow rocky god he kindly nicknamed ‘The thing’, an army of dark elves which took New York as their particular gift wrapped Christmas presents a couple of months before and an argue with his and Thor’s older sister —who even knew that she existed— which quickly got out of hand. Specifically, destroying half the city kind of getting out of hand.

Loki licks his lower lip, dubitative. Tony doesn’t really want to dwell on why he’s fixating on that kind of instances. When he finishes wrapping the bandage around the god’s midriff, he throws away the package and collects the improvised kitchen first-aid kit, leaving out a couple of ice packs.

“I run into some unsavoury beings”, he says after a while. It feels as if he thinks that he’s confessing to some kind of crime. “They happened to assume that a disgraced Asgardian prince would be an easy target for the evening, so I had to prove them wrong”.

There’s some bitterness there, a kind of inferiority complex centuries in the making that Tony doesn’t feel at all confident enough to touch, specially given that he still knows pretty much just instances about it. He decides for positive reinforcement: “Well, if you look like this I cannot imagine how the other team must be looking”.

It seems to be the best move, because Loki smiles for real for the first time in the evening. Tony takes into account how Loki’s cheekbone abandons the odd blue and recovers its pale tone when the god carefully presses an ice package to it. “Is that an alien thing, or a magical thing?”

Loki snorts. “Yes, Anthony, that’s an alien thing”.

Tony smiles. It’s the first time that the god has forgo any kind of formality with him. After weeks on insisting the god on doing it, the inventor feels vindicated and a little bit giddy. He can almost swear that there’s some colour on Loki’s cheeks. He’s tempted to point that out when the god tries to downplay the gesture by saying: “What? Did I forget any nobiliary title?”

“Please, please, if you ever need me to introduce me in Asgardian style, present me as ‘King in the North”.

Loki not only does catch the reference, he even adopts as serious a tone as he can as he answers: “Well, Anthony of House Stark, First of His Name, would His Highness be so kind as to lend me some clothes?”

Tony tries hard not to grin.

“And a bed, I trust?”

“That would be preferable. If possible, somewhere I don’t have to cross my brother in the morning”.

Loki’s poker face is a thing of marvel. It almost breaks (he swears that now the god is downright blushing) when Tony answers: “Of course, we don’t want to scandalize him with you staying overnight and all”.

The god swallows and somehow (somehow!) manages to keep all his serious demeanor. Tony really shouldn’t have someone in his life who needs as much supervision as himself. Loki replies, almost as an afterthought: “And bruised, of all things”.

That’s the precise moment when they break out laughing until they are almost crying and their tummies hurt a little. It’s such a liberating experience. So odd that they are doing so in the middle of the night, in the middle of the kitchen. Tony can’t quite remember the last time he felt like that.

“Consider it done”, he accepts when he catches himself, but giving Loki a look sends them both again into a fit of giggles.

The clock in the wall strikes 4 a.m.

Tony sighs. Thinking about the hour, he ponders how he likes to have Loki in one piece in the tower and how he would like him not feel obligated to show up in the middle of the night. The inventor feels the need to point out that: “However, if you ever want to crash again on my kitchen. Or, let’s say, if for some unthinkable reason you actually need backup…”

He does a phone gesture with his hand and hopes that it's not too ridiculous.   
Loki loves it.

“I won’t forget about it, Anthony”.

**Author's Note:**

> I live for the trope of 'damn I have to patch you up; well, you're better looking than I thought' 
> 
> Comments encouraged! Also, say hi to me here: https://thebasisofoptimism.tumblr.com/


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